What is Irredentism?

Irredentism is “attempts by existing states to annex territories of another state that their co-nationals inhabit.”* For example, Syria is profoundly irredentist, meaning that it wants back Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine, which, with Syria, comprised historic Syria (before 1917). Saddam Hussein was stridently irredentist in his claim to, and invasion of, Kuwait. Palestine and other Arab states were irredentist in their attempt to liquidate Israel in 1967. Russia, since the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., has not (yet) shown irredentist tendencies in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and the Baltic states, where 25 millions ethnic Russians live along the border with Russia. Armenia, however, has waged an irredentist campaign in Azerbaijan’s Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh.

The term irredentism comes from the Italian “irredenta,” meaning unredeemed. The term originally referred to the late nineteenth century movement to detach Italian-speaking persons under Swiss and Austro-Hungarian control (outside the Italian peninsula) and bring them into the newly formed Italian state. Italian-speaking populations in territories beyond the borders of Italy were considered “unredeemed.” Thus, in the Russia example above, Russia has not tried to “redeem” her co-nationals.

Irredentism is not secession, an allied concept. Secession means “the attempt by an ethnic, national, or historical group claiming a homeland to withdraw with its territory from the authority of a larger state of which it is a part.” (Ambrosio, p. 2) Americans get this concept because was the root of the American Civil War. On April 17, 1861, Virginia seceded from the Union, followed within five weeks by Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina, thus forming the eleven-state Confederate States of America with a population of 9 million, including nearly 4 million slaves. The Union had 21 states and a population of over 20 million.

I. Myron Weiner and Irredentism

Myron Weiner, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Boston), published in 1971 the groundbreaking work on irredentism, in which he describes a model to try to understand irredentist states.** “The model assumes that two or more political systems contiguous to one another share a common ethnic group—that is a tribe or a linguistic, religious, or culturally identifiable and self-conscious community. In at least one of the countries, the ethnic group must be a minority. In the other it may be either a minority or the majority. In the country or countries in which the ethnic group is a minority, the group is aware of its cultural distinctiveness in relation to the majority and is also aware of its affinities with its brethren in the neighboring country. Finally, for the model to be complete, one of the two states must be irredentist, that is, must seek to revise the international boundaries so as to incorporate the ethnic minority in the neighboring state and the territory it occupies.”**

Thus, in Weiner’s model, there are three actors: an irredentist state, an anti-irredentist neighbor, and a shared ethnic group crossing the international boundary.

Weiner’s model suggests that there are characteristic patterns of political development within both the irredentist and anti-irredentist states, and that the states involved in irredentist disputes have a characteristic set of relations not only to one another but to other states as well. A number of countries perfectly fit Weiner’s mode, whose members behave and develop in characteristic ways. Nine of the ways are described below.

1. The irredentist state pressing for a revision of the international boundary will generally attempt to form alliances to threaten the state containing the ethnic minority. For example, Syria has been expert at forming strategic alliances, even with such unlikely bedfellows as Iran, in its effort to reclaim Lebanon. Thus, irredentist claims dictate patterns of alliance.

2. The anti-irredentist state with the minority responds by attempting to form defensive alliances to preserve existing borders. Thus, Israel, in response to Palestinian attempts to regain control of disputed lands, builds up its military, with the help of an alliance with a major power.

3. Neighboring states and larger, more powerful countries are often drawn into irredentist disputes for many reasons, including trade and requests that they take sides. For example, Soviet involvement in the Middle East on the side of the Arab states was a device for extending Soviet influence into the Mediterranean and controlling the oil arteries to Western Europe and the United States, according to Weiner.

4. As demands for revision of boundaries on the part of the irredentist power persist, the status quo power will become increasingly suspicious of the loyalty of its ethnic minority whose status is being disputed. There is a strong tendency to accelerate programs to “nationalize” schoolchildren, to press the minority to learn the majority language and in various ways to demand expression of identification and loyalty and to increase police surveillance and border patrols and in general impose more controls over the disputed minority. [Is Mexico irredentist?]

5. The irredentist power that becomes obsessed with the question of boundary rectification begins to bring about a change in the international or military situation in order to rectify the boundaries. This means sacrificing economic development programs for military objectives.

6. The irredentist power begins to become militant abroad. “There is a strong tendency for the military to assume political power in irredentist political systems. There is a tendency for voluntary institutions and the mass media to become subservient to central authority, and a tendency on the part of the central government to resist genuinely free elections and representative processes that might change the existing power structure. Frequently, opponents of the regime will be arrested and charged with espionage and collaboration with the enemy. In short, existing governing elites, whether “radical” or “conservative”, are likely to sue the irredentist issue to prevent competitive polities and changes in the existing power structure.”

7. As emotional levels grow (unite!), “there develops a willingness within the governing elite, including the military, and within the populace as a whole, to take chances in international affairs without any careful calculations as to the probability of a successful outcome. Military skirmishes on the border are provoked. People on the border may be encouraged to make forays across the line. Finally, the irredentist state may launch an ill-prepared and abortive military attack or deliberately encourage, at a very great risk to itself, military intervention in the region on the part of a major military power. The irredentist state is most likely t launch a military attack, even if the military is aware of its own weakness in relation to the enemy, if it believes support of some kind will be forthcoming from one of the great powers. A good example of this is when the Arab states in 1967 threatened to liquidate Israel after their initially successful effort to deny Israel the use of the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Aqaba, a situation leading to Israel’s preemptive strike and the six day war.

8. Among irredentist, anti-irredentist, and the contested minority, there is likely to be almost an obsession with the past, as each actor seeks to define or justify its identity. The exact location and extent of historic kingdoms, the special merits attributed to historic heroes, and the historic distinctive qualities of the people—their language, literature and other deeply revered values are all explored and publicized by the country’s historians, poets, priests, politicians, schoolteachers, and journalists. For example, Israel advocated retention of occupied territories in 1967 on the grounds that these territories were part of an historic Jewish homeland.

9. There are several ways in which the dispute can end, all involving the use of violence or coercion, or the threat of their use.

a. The irredentist power triumphs militarily and takes control of the disputed territory.

b. The ethnic minority in the disrupted territory is physically withdrawn from the area. This removal may be accomplished through genocide, through forced internal population transfers, or through the expulsion of the minority group by either a forced exodus or an international exchange of populations.

c. One or more outside powers militarily impose a border settlement.

How do irredentist conflicts conclude? Weiner writes: “The least likely way in which the dispute can end is through voluntary agreement on the part of the disputing parties. It seems equally unlikely that any of the contemporary irredentist disputes will be resolved simply through discussion and without the active involvement of third parties prepared to exercise their power to enforce a settlement. Although the hegemony of a single great power in a region in which disputes have in the past occurred has been a moderating force, no such condition exists in those areas in which irredentist disputes are now most virulent. So long as this void continues, the syndrome described here is likely to be operative whenever and wherever irredentist disputes arise.” [Bolding by editor.]

II. Naomi Chazan and Irredentism

Naomi Chazan is a professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she is former Chair of the Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace. Chazan in her 1991 book, “ Irredentism and International Politics,” describes four waves of irredentism: the delineation of the boundaries of the core European states (especially Germany and Italy) in the late 1800s and early 1900s; the interwar period; decolonization after World War II, and the post-Cold War period that saw the collapse of the multi-ethnic states of Eastern Europe. She says: The periods of rising irredentist conflicts “have inevitably been associated with periods of major political reordering, boundary adjustment, or restructuring of the international system, and have been a byproduct of transition and uncertainty in the international order.”*** This means that the “international community has a profound effect on irredentism; the more permissive the international system is to irredentist claims, the more likely it is that they will be forcibly made; the more static or rigid the international system, the less irredentism.” (Ambrosio, p. 4)

III. Thomas Ambrosio and Irredentism

Nearly all countries have some ethnic minorities, yet all countries are not warring against all other countries to reunite populations that have been separated by national borders. For example, the French do not claim the Walloon areas of Belgium or the French-speaking areas of Switzerland. The Dutch do not demand the Flemish region of Belgium. The Italians and Germans do not make claims upon Switzerland. Why do some countries pursue irredentist projects and other countries do not? This is the question that scholar Thomas Ambrosio, a political science professor at North Dakota State, is trying to answer. He recently published (2001) “ Irredentism: Ethnic Conflict and International Politics” to try to move forward understanding about irredentism’s causes.

Ambrosio’s argument goes like this: the phenomenon of irredentism results from two forces: domestic nationalism and the policies of the international community. Domestic nationalism is the degree to which “the state advocates and pursues the premise that the political and the national unit should be congruent. This form of irredentism prods a state to undertake an irredentist project. The idea of reclaiming one’s diaspora and creating a Greater X is a powerful motivating force for national based collective action and can be promoted by” the elites, the masses or both. (Ambrosio, p. 6)

In contrast, relevant external actors often play a countervailing role. Ambrosio writes, “Since the adoption of the United Nations charter in 1945, a major premise of the postwar international order has been the inviolability of borders and a general prohibition against territorial aggrandizement.” All irredentist projects clearly violate this principle. However, since there is no way to enforce this principle, individual states are left to their own devices to control the phenomenon. Thus, Ambrosio argues, the level of irredentism is a combination of the irredentist’s state’s nationalism and countervailing intervention by the international community. (p. 7)

Editor’s Comment : There is a paucity of awareness of irredentism as an explanation or predictive tool in the Middle East and elsewhere. Weiner’s model, published in 1971, has accurately predicted the behaviors of many irredentist states, especially Iraq. Chazan’s and Ambrosio’s observations are helpful in predicting irredentist waves and outcomes.

Sources:

*Thomas Ambrosio: “Ethnic Conflict and International Politics.” Praeger Publishers, 2001.

** Myron Weiner: “The Macedonian Syndrome” in “New Balkan Politics” available at: http://www.newbalkanpolitics.org.mk/OldSite/Issue2.asp; accessed June 21, 2005.